Hennepin County keeps up effort to burn more trash near Target Field

There's more smoke in Hennepin County's long-standing effort to turn up the heat at its Hennepin Environmental Recovery Center incinerator just down the street from the Minnesota Twins' brand new Target Field: County officials met on Tuesday with Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to talk about burning more trash.

"The issue is, there is going to be an incremental increase in the amount of pollution we produce," Hennepin County's director of environmental services, Carl Michaud, told Finance and Commerce.

The county -- to the irritation of some residents -- wants to burn more trash so it can generate more steam heat for development on the northern side of downtown Minneapolis, and electricity sold to Excel Energy. The city's Planning Commission denied the county's 2009 proposal to boost the daily tonnage burned from from 1,000 to 1,212 tons. On Tuesday, county officials met with MPCA to figure out how best to proceed with environmental impact studies.